


Small Victories

by cat_77



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e13 Wait and Hope, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: Someday Bright will learn he has people looking out for him.  Maybe that day will be today.  Probably not, though.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	Small Victories

**Author's Note:**

> Because someone doesn’t go through all of that without a few bruises.
> 
> * * *

She sees it when he’s changing. 

He grants her the bathroom at his loft to get ready for the wedding, and grabs his tux to deal with in the bedroom area instead. She’s not even asking why he had one at the ready. The dress, though gorgeous, is a simple enough matter to slip over her head. She manages the zipper but can’t quite get the hook at the top without it catching on her hair that she’s yet to put up. 

She steps out to ask him if he can get it for her and catches him in the act of pulling the crisp white shirt to wear beneath the black tails off of a hanger. “Jesus, Bright,” she breathes without thinking. “You sure you’re okay to do this?”

His back is a cacophony of bruises, some an angry purple while others are still changing colors. The explosion. People don’t dive out of multi-story exploding apartment buildings without some consequences, she knows this, but what she’s seeing is severe enough that he should have been at home resting and not galivanting about with everything else. She had thought she saw him pop his shoulder back into place after landing, but wasn’t quite sure at the time. Instead, he swore up and down that the protective vest from the bomb squad had mitigated the damages and that he had nothing worse than a bruised tailbone where the cloth-top had collapsed against the seats. He then tried to say even that wasn’t so bad after doing a running slide to catch actual swords aimed for a witness. Arroyo had accused him of a mild concussion, but his pupils are pretty damned obvious against those pale eyes, so there was no action taken at the time.

Clearly, there should have been.

“Who else knows the ins and outs of this type of society enough to blend in?” he asks with a shrug without fully turning around. It highlights an almost perfectly straight line across his left shoulder, decidedly not the one she suspects was dislocated.

She steps closer, and he lets her. He flinches when she lightly rests her fingers about it and she half-expects another joke about her hands. Instead, he says, “That one might be from when Ernesto tossed me into the shelf.” She raises her eyebrows, tilting her head enough so he sees the action, and he clarifies, “In the tunnels under the house? I surprised him, but we caught him in the end.”

“That was not in the report,” she chides, and isn’t surprised when his response is to return to the task at hand.

He’s halfway through dealing with the miniature buttons before he pauses and asks, “You needed something?”

She gestures awkwardly to the back of her dress and allows him to get away with changing the subject. He scoops her curls to the side and she holds them out of the way while he manages the clasp, then he steps back to deal with his own tiny things. “I’m going to go do my hair,” she mutters, knowing any further objection is a lost cause at this point.

He has some high-end products and a surprising amount of barrettes and other things in a drawer next to the sink. Considering there’s also sleeping pills with Ainsley’s name on them in that same drawer tucked under of all things a washcloth with her initials embroidered on it, she suspects the source of the items while wondering why it doesn’t surprise her that even the younger sister isn’t nearly as unscathed as the family would like others to believe. She does a relatively simple style that she learned years ago when she had a brief period of being obsessed with 50’s glam cinema. It’s classic enough that she should fit in just fine and knows she’ll figure out soon enough if she doesn’t.

She steps out to grab her shoes and let Bright have his turn with a brush and admits, “I stole some of your sister’s hairpins.”

His lips quirk into a smile before he solemnly says, “They went to a good cause.” He passes her and nonchalantly adds, “There’s some earrings for you on the counter.”

He closes the door before she can ask for clarification, and she spots some seriously fancy bling. She’s not sure if they are his mother’s or if he picked them up at the same time he grabbed the dress. She really wants to ask, but knows he’ll deflect even that. The casual display of wealth makes her a little uneasy, even if it’s supposed to work on their side for the evening.

They get in via Arroyo’s contact and she even meets the infamous Mrs. Whitly. The woman seems nice enough for the few seconds of conversation they have, but either doesn’t recognize her own jewelry or never owned it in the first place.

Bright serves as a distraction while making some less than thinly veiled remarks about fathers and sons, leaving her to spot the potential killer. She does so, almost a second too late, and knocks the shot just enough off course to damage the woodwork versus something like someone’s brain. Bright dives headfirst to take the asshole father to the ground, and she disarms and cuffs a woman who got screwed over by society instead.

She manages to catch him before he leaves with his beaming mother, and sees the way he slightly favors one side. “How bad?” she asks quietly when Mrs. Whitly takes a step away to call for her driver.

“The lightly bruised ribs are a little more than lightly bruised,” he admits with a wheeze. He rotates the wrist that so recently was in a cast and grimaces an admission of, “I kinda landed on it.”

She’s being summoned back by the other cops but spares the time to shake a finger at him and promise, “I’ll see you at your place in an hour or two.” Her stuff is still there and, while she could technically just pick it up in the morning, she plans on using it as a reason to check on him.

She does just that, feeling a little awkward standing outside a graffitied door wearing something that costs about a paycheck or two while she waits for him to buzz her up. He’s waiting on one of the barstools against the island to his kitchen area when she makes it to the top of the stairs, and he greets her with, “Thank you for the excuse against my mother, by the way. I owe you one.”

He looks like a puppet with its strings cut, slumping forward with his elbows on his knees and still mostly in his tux. She knows how to be ruthless when necessary, so she quirks an eyebrow and says, “You can repay me by letting me check on your injuries.”

He rolls his eyes like he should have seen that coming and moves his hand from the back of his neck to spread his arms wide when he says, “I’m all yours.”

She kicks off her heels as they served their purpose for the night and steps closer. “Take off your shirt,” she directs, then amends it to, “If you can.”

“Aren’t you supposed to buy me dinner first?” he teases as he works the buttons free. 

He winces as he stubbornly pulls at the fabric with zero assistance, and she counters with, “Would you even be able to eat it anyway?”

“Touché,” he says with a snort of laughter. He grimaces again at even that little of a motion, and she twirls her finger to indicate he should turn around so she can take in the damage for herself.

The bruising hasn’t improved, not that she expects it to have done so. There’s a new swath that wraps around towards the front and she gently palpitates it to confirm there’s no give to the bones beneath. Bruised then, but not fully cracked or broken. She swallows hard when her eyes catch sight of the still fresh scar from his recent stab wound and knows it’s telling that he’s quiet and not making any jokes to distract from her actions. 

There’s not much that can be done aside from ice and painkillers, and she has no idea which ones he can even take. He has a brace for his wrist he was probably still supposed to be wearing somewhere that they should probably fish out for him, if she can find it. She tells him as much, but does add, “How’s the tailbone?”

“I’m not pantsing myself so that you can see,” he protests, and he’s tired enough that it’s hard to tell if he’s seriously afraid that she’s going to ask. 

He’s rubbing at the back of his neck again, right at the bottom of his skull. She has a suspicion as to why and figures she might as well ask about it now; maybe he’ll actually answer that as the preferable option over being pantsed. “Truth time: did you get whiplash with the fall?”

This time the grimace is more purposeful and answers for him. Her plan works though and he admits, “Maybe?”

She sighs and counts backwards from ten in the few languages she can manage before she manages, “So you’re pretty much a ball of pain right now? Tell me what you can take and I’ll try to find it. Don’t tell me and I ask Gil instead.”

He looks utterly betrayed at the threat, which was kind of the point. If she asks Gil what he can have, Gil will ask or deduce the reason why she needs to know and they both know it. He mutters an answer that she can’t quite make out, but heads towards a cupboard with all sorts of pill bottles in it and she considers it a win. She’s surprised to find some of the good stuff but assumes it wouldn’t be there if he couldn’t have it. She’s still strongly implying to Arroyo in the morning that he’s had the crap knocked out of him, but Bright doesn’t need to know that part right now.

He starts to just take a couple and she stops him, which of course leads to the inevitable protest that he was just doing what she wanted. “How bad are those things on an empty stomach?” she asks, and picks up one of the bottles herself to check. The answer, of course, is not good, and she has the feeling the two canapes he shoved in his mouth at the wedding doesn’t count as a meal despite his growing protests. “Yeah, grilled cheese again it is,” she tells him.

Which is how she finds herself in a glittery gown making him a dinner that he’ll eat just to spite her and she knows probably won’t actually make him ill if it includes the very few ingredients that he has in his own home. She makes one for herself as well as she didn’t even have the canapes, and also makes a mental note that someone needs to get the guy some real groceries beyond the few he must have picked up when he canceled his vacation. Maybe she can pass that off on Gil as well. Or maybe JT if she times it right as Tarmel will be upset that he missed out on the action of the night and will want both sides of the story.

She tucks him in, which means she ties him to his bed with leather cuffs, and changes back into her own clothing before she heads back to her place for the night. He tells her to take the dress with her as it fits her better than him, and she’s tempted to leave it behind save for the fact that he’ll just present it to her with a bunch of unnecessary pomp and circumstance in front of the entire bullpen in the morning. She has no idea if she’ll ever have a use for it again, and shoves it into the back of her closet to forget about.

When she comes into work the next morning, she finds a rather plain envelope on her desk. She opens it to find the damned earrings with a scribbled note telling her she forgot something. She doesn’t question who it’s from because she’s not dumb, and looks over to where Bright is already trying to talk Arroyo into something that is probably not in anyone’s best interests and most certainly not in his own. He even waves when he catches her gaze, and she resists the urge to bang her head against her desk. She decides to take comfort solely in the fact that he’s actually wearing the damn brace instead. Small victories and all that.

She tucks the envelope into her purse and begins to plot out just when to mention the food thing. The bruising thing is already going to happen, and more blatantly now. Based on Arroyo’s look through the glass, he’s already waiting for her to let loose. She’ll probably not even need to make it remotely subtle, though she knows enough not to make it seem like a certain petulant profiler needs full downtime as that never ends well for anyone.

Someday Bright will learn he has people looking out for him. Maybe that day will be today. She kind of doubts it though. He bounds out of Arroyo’s office and she gets the crook of the finger to let her know it’s her turn. A nod, and JT silently promises that he’s on watch for the duration. It’s probably not necessary, at least not here, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. For a guy so focused on the details of the world around him, she wonders why Bright’s never noticed that part.

Or maybe he does after all. Bright willingly and immediately goes over to Tarmel, who takes one look at him and snaps his fingers for him to sit down. Dani closes the door to Gil’s office and sees that he notices the same thing at the same time. “Small victories?” is all he asks, and she smiles in return.


End file.
